CHAPTER IX.

GODS AND MEN.

Though man usually makes his gods in his own image,
they are unlike as well as like him. Intermediate
between them and man are ideal heroes whose parentage
is partly divine, and who may themselves have been
gods. One mark of the Celtic gods is their great
stature. No house could contain Bran, and certain
divine people of Elysium who appeared to Fionn had
rings “as thick as a three-ox goad."[516] Even
the Fians are giants, and the skull of one of them
could contain several men. The gods have also
the attribute of invisibility, and are only seen by
those to whom they wish to disclose themselves, or
they have the power of concealing themselves in a
magic mist. When they appear to mortals it is
usually in mortal guise, sometimes in the form of
a particular person, but they can also transform themselves
into animal shapes, often that of birds. The
animal names of certain divinities show that they had
once been animals pure and simple, but when they became
anthropomorphic, myths would arise telling how they
had appeared to men in these animal shapes. This,
in part, accounts for these transformation myths.
The gods are also immortal, though in myth we hear
of their deaths. The Tuatha De Danann are “unfading,”
their “duration is perennial."[517] This immortality
is sometimes an inherent quality; sometimes it is
the result of eating immortal food—­Manannan’s
swine, Goibniu’s feast of age and his immortal
ale, or the apples of Elysium. The stories telling
of the deaths of the gods in the annalists may be
based on old myths in which they were said to die,
these myths being connected with ritual acts in which
the human representatives of gods were slain.
Such rites were an inherent part of Celtic religion.
Elsewhere the ritual of gods like Osiris or Adonis,
based on their functions as gods of vegetation, was
connected with elaborate myths telling of their death
and revival. Something akin to this may have
occurred among the Celts.